Snow depth, temperature, and residual forage experienced by migrating mule deer during autumn (2011–2020), Wyoming, USA

Growing evidence supports the hypothesis that temperate herbivores surf the green wave of emerging plants during spring migration. Despite the importance of autumn migration, few studies have conceptualized resource tracking of temperate herbivores during this critical season. We adapted the Frost Wave Hypothesis (FWH), which posits that animals pace their autumn migration to reduce exposure to snow but increase acquisition of forage. We tested the FWH in a population of mule deer in Wyoming, USA by tracking the autumn migrations of n = 163 mule deer that moved 15–288 km from summer to winter range. Migrating deer experienced similar amounts of snow but 1.4–2.1 times more residual forage than if they had naïve knowledge of when or how fast to migrate. Importantly, deer balanced exposure to snow and forage in a spatial manner. At the fine scale, deer avoided snow near their mountainous summer ranges and became more risk-prone to snow near winter range. Aligning with their higher toleranc..., Animal capture and handling
From 2014–2020, we captured n = 220 adult female mule deer (>1-yr-old) in the Red Desert via helicopter net-gunning (LaSharr et al., 2022). We outfitted all deer with store-on-board or iridium GPS collars that collected locations every 1–2 hours (Advanced Telemetry Systems, Inc., Isanti, MN, USA; LOTEK Wireless Inc., New Market, Ontario, CAN; Telonics Inc, Mesa, AZ, USA). We used GPS data from a previous study on the Sublette Herd (2011–2013; Sawyer et al., 2016) to analyze movement for an additional n = 27 adult female mule deer (< 1 yr old; n = 66 animal-years) which were outfitted with store-on-board GPS collars that collected locations every 3 hours (Telonics, Mesa, AZ, USA). All animal capture and handling protocols were approved by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (Chapter 33-937) and an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at the University of Wyoming (Protocol 20131111KM00040, 20151204KM00135, 20170215KM00260, 20200302MK00411).
Classi..., , Title of Dataset: Snow depth, temperature, and residual forage experienced by migrating mule deer during autumn (2011–2020), Wyoming, USA
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This dataset contains the following variables for n = 163 unique adult female mule deer (n = 334 animal-years)
that migrated 15–288 km between their summer and winter ranges in western Wyoming, USA:

1. Mean snow depth (m) and residual forage (lbs/acre) experienced by each migratory tactic and their null counterpart at each kilometer along the migratory route between summer and winter range
2. Mean snow depth (m) and residual forage (lbs/acre) experienced by empirical deer and their null counterpart throughout the entire autumn migration
3. Mean daily minimum temperature (degrees C) and mean daily snow depth (m) on the summer ranges of long-, medium-, and short-distance migrants between July 1 and December 31
4. Mean daily NDVI (scaled between 0 and 1) on the summer ranges of long-, medium-, and short-distance migrants between January 1 and Decem...